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Questions and Answers on the Moratorium
What is a moratorium?
A moratorium amounts to a "time out." When framed in human rights
language, and when a transparent process is engaged, a moratorium can be a tactical
step towards abolition of the death penalty. However, a moratorium in and of itself
does not lead to abolition.
Why should people who oppose the death penalty support a moratorium?
A moratorium buys time for education and transformation. Believing that capital
punishment is inherently wrong and a human rights abuse, the multiplicity of discourses
on human rights grounded in different cultures, religions, and visions contribute
to our growth, understanding, and application of human rights principles. We believe
that human rights are universal, indivisible, and interdependent. When applied,
they lead to reduced interpersonal violence and afford a better quality of life
for the survivors, offender, and society.
Why should people who support the death penalty support a moratorium?
Even people who support the death penalty have qualms about the possibility
of executing innocent people. Since 1973, more than 100 people have been released
from death rows across the United States because evidence found they were wrongfully
convicted.
What purposes can a moratorium serve?
A moratorium can save lives and prevent others from being put at risk. It gives
our justice system time to catch up with moral sensibilities and international
law. Two recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions have begun the process of dismantling
the death penalty in the United States, Atkins and Ring. In Atkins v. Virginia,
the Court found that executing mentally retarded offenders is cruel and unusual
punishment prohibited by the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. Twenty US states
that execute mentally retarded offenders will now have to comply with the Court's
decision, and the ruling can apply retroactively to mentally retarded inmates.
The Supreme Court also handed down Ring v. Arizona, which stipulates that more
than 100 death row inmates must be given new sentencing hearings because the sentencing
structures that led to their death sentence violate the Sixth Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution. The bricks now left to be removed are the execution of juvenile
offenders and failure to inform juries of alternatives to the death penalty.
By calling for a worldwide moratorium on capital punishment aren't you, in
effect, attempting to impose Western values on the rest of the world?
Believing that capital punishment is a human rights abuse, we welcome the multiplicity
of discourses on human rights grounded in different cultures and religions and
believe that different visions contribute to our understanding of human rights.
We also believe that human rights are universal, indivisible, and interdependent.
Although they may often have been developed in a Western context, they are not
Western in content but derive from many different and ancient traditions and are
acknowledged by all the members of the United Nations as the standards by which
they have agreed to abide.
Amnesty International supports the call for a moratorium as a step toward abolition.
We, as people of faith, invite everyone, even those who support the use of capital
punishment, to reflect on the application of the death penalty, particularly in
the United States.
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Two road signs near
the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, an execution site.
(© Scott Langley) |
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